Matthew Revell wrote: > Hi Robert, > > Firstly, sorry for the delay in replying to this. > > On 29/06/06, Robert McWilliam <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> I'm a bit worried about coming up with this type of objectives. The >> first reason is that it sounds like 'corporate speak'. Marketing is >> already misunderstood by the wider community, and us sounding like >> managers will only reinforce that. > > I agree that we need to think about how we present ourselves to the > wider Ubuntu community but we shouldn't allow misunderstanding to get > in the way of making ourselves more effective. > > I believe that objectives, such as these, can help us organise > ourselves more effectively. I'm, as with most things, happy to be > persuaded otherwise, provided there's a good argument. However, saying > that something sounds like "corporate speak" isn't a good argument :) > > Imagine if, for example, the installer team avoided object oriented > programming because the rest of the community didn't get it. Okay, not > a fantastic example, but I think it shows that it's important to use > the best tools available for the job and to consider explaining that > to the rest of the community as a secondary task, not as a reason for > dismissing the tool. > I'll have to side with project specific objectives: Have SU up by the end of August Have a first issue of the Mag by the end of July Have an organised Media Project with a nice set of objectives and participants of it's own... soon. Get the wiki up to date and beautiful by the end of July Get premanent hosting somewhere, for free.
I mean these, BTW :) >> The second (and more important) point is that I'm not convinced this >> type of objective setting technique is actually useful for a team such >> as this. > > I think this is where we have plenty of room for debate. > >> SMART objectives need to be challenging but achievable if they >> are going to have any value and that is very hard to do when we don't >> really know the capabilities of the team, or how much time they can >> commit. > > Agreed. While we find our feet, it could be difficult to set SMART > objectives. I think that the skills, commitment-level and time > resources that people can offer will become clear reasonably quickly. > >> We do need to look to how marketing is done in business to see what is >> effective in terms of the actual marketing but I think trying to >> transplant the organisational techniques used there is dangerous >> because we have a very different organisational setup. > > We do have a different organisational setup to, say, British Airways, > but this isn't amount telling people what to do, it's about measuring > the effectiveness of what we do. People in the team are free to do > whatever they choose but, I imagine, people will gather around a few > projects and the majority will be keen to see their efforts have the > most impact possible. So, if those projects within the team have an > idea of where they're going, why their chosen tactics make sense and a > good way to measure their success, I reckon we'll help motivate people > and help ourselves to do the things that help Ubuntu most, rather than > get sidetracked by our best guess at what will work. > > The Gnome guys are fairly methodical with their marketing, as are the > OOo chaps. Now, admittedly they are more established than us, so they > have a better idea of what resources they have in the team, but they > manage to combine openness etc with a serious discussion of how proven > marketing techniques can work for their projects. > >> I would say the best plan is to agree on what we want to achieve and >> how best to go about it, and then work on doing it rather than spending >> time worrying about how the objectives are expressed, and measured. > > But deciding what we want to achieve and how to go about it is pretty > much all there is to setting objectives. Allowing yourself to measure > the level of success just means that you have a chance to learn from > what works and what doesn't. > > Another discussion is around how we decide what we do. The more I > discuss it with the guys on #ubuntu-marketing, the more I think that > SpreadUbuntu is a good idea. However, that's based on my gut instinct, > not on any evidence. > > Research could be difficult for us, but it would be good to get some > idea of who we want to choose as target markets, how that fits in with > Canonical's plans, and what marketing support those targets need to > help them choose then use Ubuntu. > > As I've said elsewhere, I'm not a marketing expert but I do believe > that we can be more effective if we use the proven techniques that > marketing offers us. Of course, we should debate which ones are most > appropriate to us at that time but we should avoid thinking of > ourselves merely as a team that talks to people. We first need to > listen and then decide how, who, what and when based on thing things > that people have told us about themselves. > -- ubuntu-marketing mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-marketing
